Please, make S2 support 1360x768 (HDTV) resolution!

I just finished playing S2E1 and I think it's a really brilliant episode. The only thing I didn't like was that even though it now has widescreen support, it still doesn't have an option for 1360x768 resolution, which is the native resolution used by most modern "HD Ready" LCD HDTVs.

Since I couldn't choose 1360x768, the only other resolution supported by my TV I could choose in the resolution list was 1280x720, but it's cumbersome, because my TV only accepts that resolution over HDMI cable, not VGA cable, so I had to use a DVI to HDMI cable (which I already had around, fortunately) and configure the graphics card to output through that, but using HDMI makes the image overscan (i.e: the image is slightly bigger than the actual screen), so you lose some of the image when using HDMI and the subtitles are at the very bottom, almost outside of the screen.

All of that can be avoided by just adding 1360x768 in the resolutions list. I don't think there is a technical reason for not having an option for that resolution. In fact, available resolutions should be retrieved from the user's system (there are games that do that), instead of having a fixed list of arbitrarily chosen resolutions, as you have now, which leaves out some users with "weird" resolutions (well, LCD TV are being more and more ubiquitous, so that resolution is not so weird now).

In case available resolutions detection is not possible, I hope you can at least add that 1360x768 resolution for future episodes, and it'd be cool if you released a patch for Episode 1 so that resolution is supported in this episode as well (or at least fix this for the Episode 1 in the future DVD version).

BTW, I noticed that the screenshots for saved games are deformed when playing in widescreen (the wide image is squeezed to fit the 4:3 thumbnail spaces). It's a small non-important issue, but maybe that could be fixed either by simply adding black stripes at the upper and bottom part of the screenshot, or remaking the saved games interface to hold widescreen screenshots, but I imagine this latter solution would involve a little more work, so the black stripes solution would be fine.

I'm pretty sure Season Two gets its list of resolutions straight from Windows, so nearly every resolution that shows up as "safe" for your display will show up in the game settings as an available resolution. I can ask someone to take a look at getting support for 1360x768, but generally I think we're just reading stuff straight from Windows. I'll check it out for you.

Also, I don't suppose there are any plans to back-port this new renderer to Season 1 so that we're not stuck with 4:3 resolutions there?

Regarding the fact that the camera positions and moves in S1 weren't made with widescreen in mind, they probably would have to be done all over again, which I assume is a no-go.

By the way, I noticed that the end credits of S2E1 were designed for 16:9 (I've tested in on my LCD-TV) as the credits were stuck exactly on the right edge of the 4:3 screen I've played it on. Not the nicest text placement

Ok, since I didn't get the 1360x768 resolution in the game I assumed that it was a list of arbitrarily chosen resolutions, but from what you're saying, it seems I was wrong, and the game really gets the resolutions from the system.

Anyway, for some reason, that resolution doesn't show up in the resolution list, but it's a valid resolution and does show up in other recent games. I don't know what can be wrong. I can select that resolution in the control panel with no problem, so it's a supported resolution by both my graphics card (nVidia TI4200) and my screen (Samsung).

Also, Flo (two posts above this) says that 1280x768 is another resolution that doesn't appear, so maybe there something wrong with the detection routine.

For now, I can only play in 1280x720 through overscanned HDMI, which is far from ideal. I hope you can find out what the problem is.

By the way, I noticed that the end credits of S2E1 were designed for 16:9 (I've tested in on my LCD-TV) as the credits were stuck exactly on the right edge of the 4:3 screen I've played it on. Not the nicest text placement

I imagine that might be the case if you're playing at 1280x1024 but they should look ok at 4:3 since I didn't actually move the position of the credits relative to the middle of the screen from where they were last season. I'll look into it, though.

I'll take a look Season one didn't actually support 1280x1024 - it supported 1280x960, a true 4:3 resolution, so the credits would definitely have appeared to be indented a bit more on your 1280 screen in season one... still, I'll give it a look, because I don't want them to look lame.

Season 2 does limit the video mode list. It would be nice if it did allow you to select from all of your video modes.

I use an HDTV, which has overscan. Meaning when I pick 1280x720 parts of the game are hidden by the mask on the TV. Nvidia has an overscan mode that makes an 1176x664 video mode that fits fully on my screen. It would be nice to pick that or even the high video mode based on full HD 1920x1080 of 1768x992.

I'm am not sure the reasoning behind limiting the video modes you can select. Probably just to make the setup screen less overwhelming. So maybe if you don't want to show all the video modes, then just add a selection to play at the current desktop resolution. You could grey out that option if the desktop is not set to 32bit. Or check if there is a 32bit mode at the desktop resolution available and use that.

Allowing all the video modes would also let LCD users more acurately match the native resolution of their screen, so they get the best picture.

Thanks for any help looking into this. And I must say S&M looks great in 1280x720 Widescreen even if parts of the screen are cut off on my HDTV.